Game developer: HTML5 not yet ready for mainstream use

Social games provider Wooga has released its HTML5 game Magic Land Island as an open source project called Pocket Island. The company started developing the game in 2011, when the emerging standard was gaining more and more momentum; the project was intended to highlight the capabilities of HTML5 as an alternative to Flash-based applications. The game was released in October 2011, and now Wooga has drawn its first conclusions about the viability of HTML5 for game development.

That conclusion is that the level of sophistication of native applications has simply not been reached at this point. The company said: "It has the potential to be a complete game changer, but the technology is not there yet". Now, Wooga wants other developers to benefit from the HTML5 experience its team has gained. The engine has been released as open source code under an MIT licence, and the game's graphics are available separately under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial licence. The company said that it hopes that the community will use the project's work to continue to promote the HTML5 standard.